LRQA Nettitude Blog

By Matt Tryphona | Security Analyst at Nettitude

The Healthcare industry remains highly targeted by hackers due to the great deal of personal data that is used and handled on a day-to-day basis. One of the biggest cyber Risks within healthcare is IoT devices, as they can be used as a gateway for capturing sensitive data if not secured correctly.

When we think of an IoT device, you may think about smart-home devices, such as a smart plug, or smart bulb controlled from an app on your phone. We may even think of a ‘smart’ assistant controlled by our voice, which can do much more than just tell you the weather. The ‘smart’ assistants can act as an IoT hub that control our devices to provide a seamless futuristic experience.

It’s one thing for the security of devices in the home to be breached, but within a healthcare environment, this can have a detrimental knock on effect across the board in light of an increasing variety and severity of healthcare cyber threats. Below we’ll take a look at what IoT is, how it’s used within the healthcare industry, and how a security breach could impact the industry.

By Stuart Wright | Global Head of Compliance and Risk at Nettitude

Employee awareness of common security threats is a crucial line of defence when protecting your organisation from attacks. Within the retail sector, this is especially important as any security compromise could expose the payment details of thousands of customers.

For this reason, it is essential that retailers have a solid PCI DSS employee training programme in place that ensures employees know what best practice to follow to help prevent data leaks or cyber-attacks. But what should your training program look like? In this blog, we’ll try to shed some light on this and give some practical tips on how to approach this requirement.

By Matthew Gould

As our world advances, so does technology and the demand for easier access to the services we use and depend upon throughout our daily lives. Services that are provided by you as an organisation, whom your clients put their trust in to ensure their personal and financial data is protected. Along with the ever-changing technical landscape comes the inevitable race organisations are faced with to remain up-to-date and secure. As systems increase in size and complexity, so does the strain on resources and the ability to effectively safeguard your systems and the sensitive assets they retain.

By Tim Percival - VP of Cyber, APAC & Anthony Long - Managing Principal Security Consultant

This month, the Saudi Arabia central bank has announced plans to incorporate open banking into their financial infrastructure. This move is set bring about many new opportunities as the Kingdom changes direction from their usual path of stability. The new plans will enable increased data-sharing, allowing customers and businesses to have more control over their finances and access bespoke financial services. 

With Singapore having already began to adopt open banking technology around 2016, it’s clear that Asia’s financial market is wasting no time when it comes to the latest technological advancements. Yet, with this adoption comes increased cyber-risks, rendering regulatory authorities all the more critical in stabilising the market.

In part four of the ‘Global Regulatory Frameworks Compared series, we’ll look at AASE – the cybersecurity guidelines created for the Singapore market by ABS (The Association of Banks in Singapore).

By Tim Percival | VP of Cyber, APAC

After the recent cyber-attack on SolarWinds that exposed thousands of businesses across the world, the Singapore Monetary Authority (MAS) have stepped up measures to protect businesses in Singapore.

The new measures, which effect all financial services and e-payment firms, came into effect on Monday the 18th of January and introduce a new set of central banking rules to better mitigate technology risks. MAS have been actively working on the strengthening of cybersecurity standards for some time now, with measures including updating the MAS TRM guidelines. However, the recent breach of SolarWinds has meant that there’s new focus on implementing hardened cybersecurity measures with more emphasis on third party vendors.

By Nettitude

Happy New Year to all of our readers of the Global Regulatory Frameworks Compared Series! As a recap, in recent months, we have been taking a deep dive into the different regulatory bodies that govern the cybersecurity requirements of the Financial Sector. One of the key issues we’ve covered is the misalignment of cybersecurity standards across the board, which in turn led to the introduction of a pan-European framework that could be leveraged across the whole of the Eurozone – TIBER EU.

While the UK and Europe have a fairly coordinated approach with the CBEST and TIBER Frameworks, Asia has a slightly different approach. In part 4 of this series, we’ll be taking a look at the iCAST Framework, governed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).

By Nettitude

With the recent hack of FireEye, there have been many questions circulating among Cybersecurity experts and the clients that they serve. At Nettitude we’re dedicated to providing the most robust and secure security practices to the people we serve.

In light of recent events, we’ve asked our security experts who, on a daily basis, are on the front lines of cybersecurity to answer the questions we received. We hope this information can help you keep yourself prepared, protected, and offer peace of mind that Nettitude is fully prepared to keep you protected.

By Stuart Wright | Global Head of Compliance and Risk

When we think about “insider threats” to our organisations, it’s all too easy for our minds to conjure up clichéd images of elaborate plots from a spy film, where the rookie agent goes undercover to get inside information, and then saves the day with just a few minutes to spare. Or perhaps we think about corporate espionage, where an unscrupulous employee infiltrates a competitor by getting a low-level admin job and creeping around the office late at night stealing valuable data that will give their employer a competitive edge.

The reality of the insider threat is almost always a little less exciting, and certainly less dramatic incidents are far more commonplace than the dramatised examples above.

There’s also a lot we can do to try and protect against these attacks, and in this blog post, we’ll talk about some of the key things you should be considering to help address the insider threat.

By Dan Ryder | Security Operations Team Lead at Nettitude

Cybersecurity teams often start out purchasing a SIEM solution with high hopes they have the staff, training, capability and organisational resources to get the most out of their new platform.

Unfortunately, in many cases the reality is that an already overstretched security team does not have the time needed to manage a SIEM, investigate alarms, manage rulesets, juggle compliance requirements, and ensure continuous proactive monitoring.  In the short term, the gap can be plugged through vendor professional services. However, this needs to be factored into costs on a rolling basis as the organisations attack surface evolves and is not a viable long-term solution.

One of the main contributors to why these internal deployments fail, have more hidden costs, and take more time than expected to utilise is alarm fatigue. In the following post, we’ll investigate what alarm fatigue is and the possible causes.

By Nettitude

Evidencing cybersecurity measures in ship architecture: How can Lloyd’s Register ShipRight Procedures help?

With cyber attacks increasing by 900% on the maritime industry over the last 3 years, it’s never been so important for this sector to address their cybersecurity landscape. As cyber-attackers develop increasingly sophisticated methods to infiltrate a ships operational technology, we are beginning to see that ship owners must now consider integrating cybersecurity requirements into the technical designs and architecture proposals for new builds and refits from an early stage.

As of January 2021, not only will it be in the interests of ship owners and operators to consult cybersecurity best practice as the foundations of ship development, it will be a requirement by the International Maritime Organisation. In order to keep a vessel ‘in class’, it is now essential for maritime organisations to be able to demonstrate a set of robust cybersecurity controls that are pragmatic, appropriate and relevant to the risks they face. So how can ship owners approach need and requirement?